: Thank you for your opinion!!: Really. We don't get to hear enough of that.

: I always had a big rear end, and my friend, now husband, when we were only friends always noticed my rear! : And not in a negative way... : )

: But eating disorders are from self-image distortions, not based on what someone else thinks but what we think of ourselves:: I was appalled at my weight though I know now it was really average. I always wanted to be skinnier. In my family fat meant being a "lazy slob". Period. I grew up with that message.

: I was disgusted by food all thru my teen years.: I could eat a few bites if starving and then it looked disgusting to me. If I did eat, after a while I became sick to my stomach and had to vomit. I called it a weak stomach, and indigestion. But it was bulimia.: It was all in my own thought life!!! I made my own self sick.: So I quit eating, and lived on crackers and tea.: I went very thin, bony. At 5'9, I was a rack.: But I thought I looked good. It was anorexia.

: Speaking of Christ: : it is part of my story that I became a Christian, accepting Jesus Christ as God's Son come to pay the penalty for my sins.: I was surprised to learn that Jesus was the first well-known male to acknowledge the value of females as equal to the value of males. This raised my own self-evaluation. My thinking changed as I read the Bible and saw that I am forgiven, accepted and loved just as I am by my creator, and I didn't have to earn it!: I began to be able to eat at church potlucks and keep the food down.: I got a book called, "Telling Yourself the Truth. It is full of the lies we tell ourselves, such as that fat equals "lazy" or "slob".

: Reality: fat is just another body organ. It can be unbalanced just as any other organ. But fat is not evil.: Females are made with a fatty layer under the skin that males mostly do not have. : Rejecting fat is to deny femaleness.

: Trying to control the fat cell organ by starving oneself or vomiting is useless. One may get skinny, but one is then ugly by the virtue of being unhealthy/sick!

: How much better to accept the fat organ and take care of it. And to be the individual weight that is healthy!: One can have small fat cells and look toned and cut and be healthy, but it takes healthy actions.: Starving and vomiting are not healthy actions.

: It is a sick man that is attracted to sick women.: It is a sick woman that hates her body. It is just a tool, after all. And lovely to The Father.

: I still get ill sometimes when I binge, which I still do sometimes when I fail to eat regularly. Making myself eat every meal is still a sruggle for me. I did not arrive at it, yet.: But I also messed up my metabolism really badly, and now live with 80 extra pounds due to having starved myself. My fat cells are just doing what they are created to do, save me from starving! It does all catch up with us, sooner or later if we abuse ourselves, like I did.

: Maybe I will someday rebalance, I don't know.: For now I accept my body as it is, according to how I treated it. It is my own consequence.: My husband loves me and my body is fine with him, just as it is, though I wish to look better in my own eyes.: I am working on that in healthy ways now: exercising/working out to build muscle tone and eating. It is a slow process after all the years of abuse, in my case.

: There are good ways to control food intake. Like eating several snacks/small meals a day of fruits and vegetables and nuts/proteins. Some snacks are just a glass of low-fat milk.

: Tell yourself the truth!: Fat is a normal body part, and has a healthy function. Treat the body right and the fat cells will not get imbalanced.: God made everyone different, and the different bodies are good. Abusing oneself for superficial reasons is evil.: But we can have forgiveness and power to overcome wrong thinking.: I am living proof.: God bless everyone that reads this.

thank you for that message! i think it will help a LOT of people, including me.